‘Say No’ to Facebook’s Free Basics : Prathidhwani

Technoparktoday.com>> Information to common man in no time – that is the most remarkable feature of internet.
Indeed internet created a revolution by quick access of wide and vast information and thereby giving a new direction to the socio – economic development. Pace and direction of such a good change will get a huge blow if we adapt FREEBASICS which is nothing but a marketing technique from Facebook.

The Socio-Cultural Organization of Technopark Employees – Prathidhwani is in campaign to promote five key principles for the future of the web – Freedom of expression online and offline, affordable internet access, protection of user data and privacy, a decentralised internet infrastructure, and net neutrality.

Free Basics is an initiative by Facebook splits the open internet into free and paid tiers and goes against the concept of net neutrality, which says that all data on the internet should be treated equally.
This creates a branded internet which is not “internet”. Imagine now that there’s a new policy that could let a mobile company only offer you Facebook and nothing else on government spectrum? Not Google, not Naukri, not You Tube, no site that is really needed. But instead all can have is Facebook, and a bunch of other teeny tiny sites, and that’s all.

Its impossible to imagine a situation which forces us to use only the sites decided by Facebook thereby separating a common citizen of India from the present Internet. It is the right of every internet user to get free internet without any hidden agenda.

No doubt, the Internet is the greatest revolution of our times. Its depth and breadth created the present day “Mark Zuckerberg”. It is an irony that the separation of Internet from its users are initiated from the same person. This narrow minded initiative will surely defeat the internet’s basic objective – which is access of knowledge to a common man.

Prathidhwani requests their fellow colleagues at Technopark to learn and pro-actively expose the hidden agenda behind Free basics and join along with the world against this digital apartheid.